On a sunny Saturday in May, Alisa Barr had her right hand on
a trophy and both of her feet in the air.

Her soccer career had reached its peak roughly 20 minutes
prior, when Barr tracked down a long free kick and scored the extra-time goal
that gave the Lambert girls soccer team a 2-1 win over Grayson in the Class 7A
state championship game. In the post-game celebration, Barr’s teammates circled
around and lifted her off the ground as she clutched the Longhorns’ hardware.

That state championship win came just in time for Lambert,
for the three seniors on that team but also for the young, hyper-talented group
that drove the group’s dominant late-season run. Even in the postgame
afterglow, the Longhorns recognized the scope of the losses to come.

“We’re expecting to lose a lot,” Longhorns defender M.E.
Craven said that day.

So on a cloudy Wednesday in February, two games into her
final high school season, Barr stood on Lambert’s indoor track, with the
Longhorns’ current team warming up in the background, and surveyed a sport that
has been reshaped completely.

Heavy losses

Lambert lost seniors Maddie Eddleman, Jordyn Ebert and
Daniela Conroy to graduation after the 2017, but also gone in 2018 are
sophomores Sydney Hennessey and Madison Haugen and juniors Brooke Schuyler,
Megan Hong and Ellie Prybylski. Craven, a senior, is currently rehabbing a knee
injury, but if she were healthy, she would be out of the high school ranks as
well.

Lambert freshman Sydney Hennessey hugs senior Jordyn Ebert after the Longhorns' victory over Grayson Saturday, May 13, 2017, in the Class 7A state championship.
- photo by Micah Green
Those players are now playing on club teams that are part of
the U.S. Soccer Development Academy, a new level of play that has sucked the
top tier of talent out of the high school ranks across the country by
prohibiting its players from playing club and high school soccer at the same
time.

Lambert took heavy losses due to the rule, but the Longhorns
might not even be the hardest-hit team in the county: Five players who are currently
seniors at South Forsyth are playing on the U-18/19 DA team at United Futbol
Academy, and South junior Nikki Bario plays for the U-16/17 team at
Atlanta-based Tophat. West Forsyth also lost junior Kylie Gazza and seniors
Meagan McInerney and Kristy Jebavy to the DA ranks.

“I think it’s a great opportunity developmentally for the
girls, to get that exposure,” West head coach Kim Spence said. “I just wish
there was a way they could maybe do both.”

The Development Academy concept has existed for more than 10
years now, since it was created for boys in 2007. Those clubs have taken
players from the Forsyth County high school ranks in the past – like Chris
Mikus, who graduated from South in 2016 and now plays at the University of
Memphis – but not at the scale currently seen in the girls game. The girls’ DA,
which has a 10-month season, is in its first year and has replaced the Elite
Clubs National League as the top level of club play in the country.

Lambert head coach Scott Luthart questioned the utility and
need for the DA model in general, noting that since its creation on the boys
side, the Men’s National Team has failed to qualify for the upcoming World Cup
and has twice failed to qualify for the Olympics.

Those failures haven’t stopped U.S. Soccer from going ahead
with the girls academy, though. April Heinrichs, the women’s soccer technical
director for the federation, was sharply critical of high school soccer in
particular in an interview with Soccer America that she did in 2016.

“No one is talking about high school soccer as a player
development environment,” Heinrichs told the magazine. “It’s a social
environment. A ‘my daughter gets her name in the local newspaper’ environment.
It’s not a player development environment. In fact, it develops bad habits and
complacency.”

Luthart, who coaches club teams at UFA, defended the utility
of high school, mentioning benefits such as teaching players to balance
academics and athletics and the opportunity for some players to face opponents
older than what they would see at the club level.

What’s seen in Forsyth County programs, which have been some
of the strongest in the state in recent years, isn’t necessarily present in all
high school programs, though.

“I can say with confidence, when kids come out of our program,
they're better soccer players,” Luthart said. “…These kids are not regressing
through our program. Now, can that be said about every program? No.”

A different
opportunity

Former high school players on UFA didn’t attack the level
like Heinrich did, but they also didn’t completely disagree with her
assessment. McInerney, a Georgia State signee, said she enjoyed using the high
school games as an opportunity to try out moves and strategies that she might
not typically employ in club. Courtney O’Malley, who played goalkeeper for
South and will play in college at UNC Asheville, said there was a particular
lack of skill development for her position.

“There’s not really a goalkeeper coach or someone (like
that),” O’Malley said. “We’re just kind of thrown in, like, ‘Get in the goal!
Stop some shots!’ So I’m diving around, but I’m not really getting techniques
or the right repetitions I get in a club.”

The social aspect of the game, the opportunity to play in
front of friends, family and peers and spend time with classmates, was
something all of the DA players said they missed about high school soccer.

But it wasn’t enough to get them to pass on the DA and play
their senior seasons.

“Nothing against high school; I loved the experience I had,”
O’Malley said. “But when the opportunity (to play DA) came, (high school) was
never really an option for me.”

South Forsyth goalkeeper Courtney O'Malley controls possession in a game against West Forsyth during the 2017 season.
- photo by Micah Green
It wasn’t because of the players’ college commitments, at
least not directly. O’Malley said playing DA was “definitely encouraged,” but
she had the option to stay at a lower level. South senior Payton Schurr, a
Mercer signee, plays for UFA’s DA program, but West’s Karson Rosenberger, who
also signed with the Bears, has stayed in the ECNL and is playing for the
Wolverines this spring. McInerney and South senior Reagan Smith, a Villanova
signee, said they didn’t have any input at all from college coaches about
playing DA.

“I don't even know if they know, to be quite honest,” Smith
said.

While college coaches weren’t part of the decision, the
prospect of playing at the college level certainly was. DA teams practice four
times a week, up from the three times that club players would typically do in
the past. There’s more specialized skill training and more attention paid to
physical fitness. DA teams stay separately from players’ parents when they
travel to tournaments, and there are fewer chaperones for the team, which
O’Malley said helps prepare them for the independence they’ll have in college.

The three players said that even if they were allowed to
play high school alongside DA, they wouldn’t. The physical toll of playing both
levels in years past was already a heavy load, McInerney said, and doing so
with a heavier club workload would be unbearable. Iggy Moleka, UFA’s co-founder
and executive director for soccer, is in strong agreement.

“You have to understand: These are young people,” Moleka
said. “They are not machines … if you overdo it, you will break them.”

In the high school ranks, meanwhile, a significant
rebuilding process has been underway.

Something new

Lambert senior Lauren Hong, Megan Hong’s older sister, might
have played DA this year if she hadn’t torn her ACL last April, which prevented
her from trying out. So Hong is back with the Longhorns, looking to defend a
state title with a dramatically different cast.

The Longhorns had notched their first win of the season the
night before, beating Collins Hill 2-1 after losing to Greater Atlanta
Christian and Mill Creek to open the season. Hong saw signs of the adjustment
period that every new team has to go through, and some moments brought to mind
the players that Lambert lost to the club ranks.

“On the sidelines, we'll say, ‘Oh, if we could have played
this ball with this player from last year, yeah, it would have worked great,’”
Hong said. “But soccer is always about adaptation, so we're constantly looking
to improve with what we have.”

The scale of losses to the DA has invigorated high school
teams in some aspects, as well. Opportunities for varsity spots and playing
time have opened up for players who might not have had gotten chances otherwise.

“These kids are coming out every day thinking they can earn
a starting spot,” Luthart said. “And it’s true.”

The effect of the DA on high school programs also varies
wildly throughout the county. While Lambert and South were decimated, North
Forsyth, for one, didn’t lose anybody to the program. For a Raiders team that
has consistently lagged behind schools to the south, the possibility of a more
even playing field is an exciting development.

“I think the players are a little more confident,” North
head coach Jared Steinberg said. “They’ll drop names, ‘This girl’s going, this
girl’s not here anymore, Lambert lost this one,’ and so on. It’s my job to make
them understand (that) some of these schools may have lost some top-notch
players, but Lambert’s still Lambert, and they’re still going to be good.”

Lambert's Alisa Barr, one of the few members of the Longhorns' 2017 state championship team still playing with the program, is lifted up by her teammates after the win over Grayson on May 13, 2017.
- photo by Micah Green
The impact of the DA this year might not be what happens in
the future. Boys players have regularly left their high school teams and
returned, and that surely will happen with girls.

But for now, Barr’s senior year represents the first look at
what will be a very different sport going forward. Like the vast majority of DA
players, she’s set to play in college at well, having signed her National
Letter of Intent on Feb. 7 to play at Georgia Southwestern State, a Division II
school. Most of the seniors playing DA weren’t allowed to sign during the
ceremonies at their schools, despite having played multiple years for those
programs.

Barr knows her senior year marks a sea change, but it hasn’t
taken away from her enjoyment of soccer. The Longhorns’ state title marked the
end of something, but not of the sport as a whole.

“It was the end of an era,” Barr said. “But it's also the
start of something new.”